Chapter 19
19
“C lose your mouth, Liz, you’re catching flies,” I said to my roomie, who was making it evident exactly how attractive she found my vampire companion. If her jaw dropped any lower, she’d be tripping over her lip.
“Sorry, not sorry,” she quipped, taking Robert’s hand into her own. “Oliva said you were hot, but wow .”
Robert turned to me, his brow quirked. “Oh, did she now?”
I rolled my eyes, ignoring the question. “Why is it so cold in here? I can practically see my breath.”
Liz, finally releasing Robert’s hand, wrapped her arms across her chest. “Tell me about it. The window was wide open when I got home.”
Well, that was weird. “What window?”
“The one above the kitchen sink.”
“I didn’t leave it open,” I said. “You know how obsessive I am about keeping everything locked up.” The number of crimes committed each year in Pelville still didn’t come close to the amount committed each day in the Bay Area. I may not have been worldly, but I wasn’t stupid.
Liz frowned. “I didn’t, either . . . I don’t think .”
“You don’t have a home alarm?” Robert asked, stony-faced.
Liz and I burst out laughing.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’d don’t have anything worth stealing,” she told the vamp.
Robert said, “It’s not possessions I’m concerned about. Did you draw a smiley face on the bathroom mirror, Elizabeth?”
Great. I’d just managed to calm him down about the stalker he was so convinced I had. I nodded at Liz with a meaningful look— tell him yes —which she totally missed.
“What a weird question,” she commented, looking at Robert and me. “When are you talking about?”
“I noticed it the other night when I was getting out of the tub, but I was thinking maybe you’d done it earlier,” I explained. “You were at David’s when I saw it.”
Liz thought a moment. “Sounds like something I’d do.”
“See?” I said to Robert, who didn’t look convinced. Truth be told, Robert’s earlier words of warning had left me feeling mildly spooked, though I still thought he was being paranoid.
“But you aren’t sure?” he asked Liz.
Liz placed a hand on her hip. “Okay, you guys are being weird. What’s going on?”
Now it was Robert I was throwing meaningful glances at. He was obviously aware that we couldn’t tell Liz what I really did for a living, which also meant that he couldn’t reveal his thoughts on the decoys who’d vanished. I jumped in before he had a chance to answer.
“There’s been a couple odd things that have been happening to me, is all,” I told her. “I thought I was being followed during my run the other night, and then I’ve been getting these weird calls where they stay on the line but don’t say anything. I figured it was bots.”
Liz snorted. “It’s probably Nick.”
“Who’s Nick?” Robert growled.
Thanks a lot, Liz. “He’s my idiot ex. But honestly, I don’t think he’d—”
“Um, he totally would ,” Liz interrupted. She looked at Robert. “I’ve never liked the guy. He’s a complete creep. Always wants what he can’t have, which is why he’s probably bothering Olivia now.”
“You want to me have a talk with this Nick creep?” Robert asked me.
I wondered what Robert’s version of “talking” entailed. Whatever it was, I had no doubt Nick would likely never bother me again after that conversation. Still, I didn’t want to get him involved in my trashy drama. Nick was my embarrassing problem to deal with.
“No, it’s okay. I honestly don’t think it’s him, anyway,” I said, giving Liz a thorny look.
“Right, well, I’ll leave you two alone. I’m off to bed,” Liz said, taking the hint. Over her shoulder she called, “Don’t do anything I would do.”
“Don’t you mean wouldn’t do?” Robert smiled.
“I know what I said,” Liz quipped as she walked into her room.
Robert cracked up. “She’s something else.”
“That she is.”
Looking serious all over again, he said, “I’d feel better if you’d allow me to hire security for you.”
I frowned. “ I wouldn’t. I’d feel like a prisoner. Besides, we don’t even know if there is anyone stalking me.”
“Olivia, I . . .”
“You what?”
He clasped his hands at his waist. “I haven’t felt this way about a human in a very long time,” he said uneasily, as if he was admitting to committing murder.
“Which is what?” I held my breath.
He hesitated, finally saying, “Protective.”
It wasn’t the declaration of love I’d been hoping for, but it still warmed my bones.
I gave Robert a quick tour, which lasted about one minute, as small and unembellished as the place was. I wondered how my shabby things and the overall way I lived must look to his billionaire eyes. Even the nicest items in the apartment, a second-hand wool rug and a pair of vintage brass lamps Liz had picked up at a yard sale, were laughably modest compared to, well, literally everything inside Robert’s home. I had to hand it to him for keeping a neutral expression, since he was probably thinking I lived like a pauper.
“It’s nothing fancy, but it’s where I call home. For the time being, anyway. Liz is moving in with her boyfriend, so I’ve got to find someplace new to live. Soon,” I said as we took a seat on the sofa. I’d stupidly offered him a beverage in the kitchen while I was getting water before remembering that the only liquid he could drink would have to come from my veins, which was so not going to happen. “
“Where will you move?”
I shrugged. “I honestly haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Will you stay with family while you’re looking?”
“Not unless I want to live at the cemetery. I don’t have any family left,” I said with a shrug.
I expected him to be squeamish about the topic, like most people usually were when I shared such information, but he was unaffected. As old as he was, he’d likely lost a few loved ones throughout the years. “What happened to your parents, if you don’t mind talking about it?”
“I don’t mind. They were killed by a drunk driver.”
“I’m sorry, Olivia.”
“They died when I was young, so I hardly remember them,” I said. “I try to not be bitter, because what good would it do me?”
“Was the driver brought to justice?”
“He didn’t need to be. It was my father. He was sixteen beers deep when he got behind the wheel to drive him and my mother home from a bar—from what I’ve been told, he was the more sober of the two. They only made it a few miles.” I shook my head, embarrassed. “Sorry, that was an overshare, wasn’t it? I’m not usually one to air dirty laundry.”
Robert shifted on the sofa, his strong thigh resting against mine. I stifled a moan, battling an urge to straddle him right then and there. For the umpteenth time, I was thankful he wasn’t a mind reader. He was so beautiful that I physically ached looking at him. But it wasn’t just that; I genuinely liked the vamp, too.
Some women are inexplicably turned on by awful, disrespectful men who treat them like garbage under the guise of being “bad boys,” but not me. After the way Nick behaved in our relationship, never again. Still, it made me feel special, knowing that Robert wasn’t so benevolent with every woman, as if he was saving his sweetest self for only me. Why he did remained a mystery.
“I like your dirty laundry, so to speak,” he purred. “Tell me more.”
“About what, my dead parents?”
He shook his head. “No, I want to know about later. Where did you go after your parents died?”
“Oh, I went to live with my grandmother, Tilly. She died not so long ago.”
“You've had to endure a great deal of loss, Olivia. What was she like?”
“She was the nicest person I’ve ever known. Without her, who knows how I would have ended up.” Feeling a little choked up, I added, “I miss her every day,”
Noticing my shivers, Robert moved closer to me, then pulled the throw blanket off the back of the sofa. He smoothed over the tops of our laps. “You warm enough?”
“I am now. How about you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t feel temperature the same way humans do. The only time I ever feel cold is when I need blood. But even then, I have to be starving.”
I laughed softly. “It’s strange; I sometimes forget you’re a vampire. But then you go and say something about drinking blood or sleeping through the day or hanging out with Charles Darwin or whoever, and I remember.”
“I like that you forget. Some humans, it’s all they can think about,” he said. “Tell me more about your childhood with Tilly.”
I turned so that I could look him in the face. “Why are you so interested in my life?”
“Other than the obvious reasons that you’re a beautiful woman and I enjoy your company, your mortal life is—”
“Mundane?”
“I was going to say wholesome. You forget how long it’s been since I’ve been human. It makes me nostalgic for the good old days.” He chuckled softly at his sentimentality. “We have a couple hours left of our evening together, anyway. We might as well make use of it. I’m being sincere when I say I don’t know anyone like you, so your stories are entertaining, even if to you they seem ordinary.”
“If you say so,” I said, though I could appreciate his outlook. “Good thing we’ve got so much time left, because we’re going to need a lot of it if you want to know about Tilly and me. Though I can’t guarantee you’ll find anything I say interesting.”
He grinned. “I’m all ears.”
“As long as your promise to tell me about your background in return?”
He pretended to consider the proposition. “You drive a hard bargain, Taylor, but okay.” It was funny, the way he’d addressed me by my last name . Robert was old-school in so many ways, yet he could be unexpectedly modern.
I sighed, traveling back in time mentally to my childhood in Pelville, a place I didn’t often visit because the memories were bittersweet. It was going to be uncomfortable, discussing my impoverished background with a debonaire billionaire like Robert, yet I somehow knew he wouldn’t judge.
“After my parents died, I was brought to a mobile home park to be with Tilly,” I began. “It may sound like a downgrade, a little girl moving into a tiny trailer to live with her grandmother, but the lifestyle I’d had with my parents was . . . shaky. They had me young, as teenagers, and they never fully grew up—one day they were kids, the next they had a kid. Children raising children , as the saying goes, though I was the only child they ever had.
“My parents got married at Pelville City Hall when my mother was five months pregnant with me. I’ve only seen photos of the ceremony once, which was enough. My father scowled during the whole thing like he was being sent to the electric chair. My mother didn’t look much happier, but at least she’d tried to pretend.” I stopped to take a sip of water.
“They must have loved each other at some point, though, for her to have gotten pregnant with you.”
I clucked my tongue and stared at Robert disbelievingly. “Over a hundred years old, and you’re this naive? You do know that it doesn’t take love for humans to make a baby, right?”
He laughed at that.
“Anyway, my parents partied a lot, did drugs. Probably because they were both so miserable. We got evicted every couple of months, so we were always moving from one motel to the next. With Tilly, I got stability I’d never had before. We had nothing, but it felt peaceful.”
I stole a look at Robert, who didn’t appear bored. On the contrary, he seemed captivated, like he wouldn’t dream of interrupting. I couldn’t help thinking of Nick, who’d frequently half-listened to me and would have been scrolling through his phone the second he realized my narrative didn’t revolve around him. It was an amazing feeling, to now be heard by a man I wanted.
“Tilly brought me up me the best way she could on what little we had,” I said. “Funny thing is, she was the daughter of millionaires in New York. She grew in a mansion.”
Robert’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “How did she go from such wealth to a trailer in Florida?”
“Everything that happened was because her parents were elitist old-money types who cared about keeping up appearances above all else,” I said.
“I’ve known a few of those in my day,” he commented dryly. “My maker is a little like that. My love for him will always be unconditional, of course, but he’s such a snob.”
I laughed. “I can’t wait to hear about him. If it’s not against some vampire law to talk about it?”
He smiled at the question. “It isn’t, but I want to hear more about your life first. You’ve only just started.”
I nodded and continued. “When my great-grandparents found out that Tilly had gotten pregnant with my mother at seventeen, they were furious. When they learned that the father was a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, they threw her out. She left home with a few personal items, a small amount of savings, and the clothing on her back, then traveled south to Florida. Starting from scratch as a single teen mom, she never managed to recover financially.”
Robert shook his head. “It’s astounding the things humans do to their own family.”
“Tell me about it,” I agreed. “My great-grandparents never reached out to my mother, and they have yet to contact me, but it’s not like I want to get to know them anyway after the way they treated Tilly. As far as my grandfather, all I know about him is that he must have been one hell of a magician because of how quickly he made himself disappear once he learned of Tilly’s pregnancy.”
“How about you, Oliva? How did you go from being penniless in Florida to being in San Francisco with a Dewhurst degree? And then how did you go from that to being a decoy for vampires?”
“It was all Tilly’s doing—all of it but the decoy part, obviously. As I got closer to high school, she became obsessed with getting me out of poverty. Education was a priority in our home. She often said, Beauty may get your foot in the door, Olivia, but intellect will keep you there. Her other favorite was , You’ll have your looks temporarily and your brains forever .”
“Not if you’re a vampire,” he smirked.
I laughed. “You have a point.”
“Please don’t take this as patronizing, but one would never guess you grew up in poverty because of how you carry yourself and fit in so well with billionaires. You probably get along with them better than I do,” he said with a grin. “And the way you wore that gown so flawlessly the other night . . . It was like you’d been wearing couture all your life. You were stunning, to say the least.”
I nodded and thanked him. Sure, I was probably blushing a little, too. “Because of her background, Tilly taught me a lot about high society customs and trained me to a-nnun-ci-ate my words. If I used slang or swore, she’d make me repeat the sentence properly. She said it would hinder my success for the rest of my life if I got into the habit of speaking in a low-class manner. I fought her on a lot of it when I was younger, thinking people were more open-minded than she gave them credit for, but from what I’ve seen she was right.”
“Sounds like your grandmother was a smart lady. And she obviously did an amazing job raising you.”
“She did in every way she could. She also made sure I took care of myself physically, which was a necessity, since we couldn’t afford health insurance. It was a complete one-eighty from how I’d lived with my parents, who didn’t concern themselves too much with consequences. Before Tilly, I’d never had rules or a bedtime, and I could eat candy for breakfast or skip bathing for days, if I wanted.” I sighed, thinking how horrible it must sound. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d shared such information with anyone. Maybe it was some kind of vampire magic, but I felt safe opening up to Robert. Compelled to let him in, even. My only hope was that he didn’t think I was oversharing or, worse, trying to elicit pity. The last thing I wanted was for him to see me as a charity case.
“And after Florida, California?”
I nodded. “I’d never been outside of Florida until the day I flew to San Francisco.”
“That must have been quite the culture shock.”
“I was so unworldly. A complete bumpkin,” I said with a little laugh. “I was a nervous wreck going through airport security in Orlando, holding up the line and getting in everyone’s way, not knowing where to stand or what would happen when I walked under the metal detector. The people were so nasty and intolerant that I locked myself in a bathroom stall and cried for a solid fifteen minutes after.”
“Poor Olivia,” he said sweetly.
“Don’t feel too bad. What doesn’t kill you, right? On a positive note, it made me learn faster,” I said. “When I stepped off the plane in California, it was like a different world. Even the air in San Francisco was different, foggy and crisp opposed to muggy. What stunned me most were the people. Everyone seemed to know exactly where they were headed, and they were dressed to the nines. In Pelville, it was take you time in flip-flops, jean cutoffs, and bikini tops.”
“I can imagine how alone you must have felt,” he said.
Could he? It was difficult to picture such an exquisite man being hard up for company. I nodded. “I was an overwhelmed small-town girl lost in a big, bad metropolis. I remember being in the airport and looking down at my suitcase, thinking how easy it would be to hop on the next flight back to Florida.”
“But you didn’t.”
I shrugged. “I couldn’t bear to think what it would do to Tilly if I returned home a coward. And so I remained in San Francisco, making it my new home. Fast-forward a few years, and I now I’ve got Liz as a best friend and a psychology degree. Plus, a mound of student debt that inspired me to accept the job at Dignitary, which you know.”
“Ah, that pesky debt,” he said. He went quiet a moment, processing the information. He seemed on the verge of saying something but then he stayed quiet.
I checked my watch, seeing that we had plenty of time left. I was about to break the silence, but he spoke up.
“You may find this difficult to believe, Oliva, but you and I come from similar upbringings.”
I peered at him skeptically. “You’re right, I do find that difficult to believe.”
The side of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. Believe it or not.
“Okay, then, it’s your turn. Tell me everything about this similar upbringing you think we have.”
“I can’t tell you everything . That would take eons.”
“Let’s start with your rebirth.” I laced my fingers under my chin. “Tell me how you came to be a vampire.”